Probably the best Pre amp the active AE1 have ever had feeding them, early days but how do they compare to your ATC19s.
Or perhaps just try using his Hugo direct to AE1?
I am finding they good a need a good controllable pre… I don’t think the Hugo is really strong enough…and as far as usability I want the Naim automation…
However there is a loss of some subtle detail in the upper mid, but addition of other info … which is a shame… enjoyable though
Hi Simon
How did you connect from 552 to the AE1… it’s been on my mind for some time too…to try these AE1 Actives…
I have a 4 pin DIN to phono, to which I connect some rather good sliver plated copper twisted pair phono leads I have.
They are very different from the passive 19s… quite a different presentation…early days…
Instead of a ‘loss’, when you’re shifting kit on reasonably soon, you could think of it instead as having paid rental for £x per month…?
Hmmm… yes that’s one way of looking at it… Steep rental though 
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Ok… some more listening… tweaking position and starting to run in… and the lower mid is starting to openi up wonderfully. Just listened to Muse ‘s Absolution… an album possibly made to be listened with actives… great music clarity and expression and the vocals come through easily and emotively (although it sometimes sounds like Bellamy is eating the mic) even through the loudest arpeggio driven cacophony… with drum also clearly pulsing the tracks on…
Truly great stuff and incredible literally sofa shaking performance from these modest speakers…
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All sounds very positive Simon . Are the AE1’s going to stay on your main system ?
They are at the moment… very refreshing
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Anyone still interested, I have found using passive quality in line audio unbalanced to balanced converters made by Canford work exceedingly well… I use a very short Flashback 4 pin DIN lead to phono and connect to the Canford converters for the long balanced XLR runs… seems to make the 552 sound more like the 552 again…which I suspect is not otherwise optimally happy driving long unbalanced loads.
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thanks Simon, that’s a good solution to run active speakers from a Naim preamp
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Perhaps you should have kept Dave and run straight from its balanced XLR outputs 
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Possibly but in my experience good though DAVE was, it wasn’t the incredible 552… also I have analogue inputs…
Anyway this current solution seems to work wonderfully, and the transformer impedances seem matched with the nac552 output.
Simon, does using a passive converter limit the lenght of the interconnect cable you can use between the converter and the active speaker?
No, I don’t believe so… which is why you use an UN-BAL.
Ok, thanks. I assumed that the AE1s XLR inputs were designed to be connected to a +4dBu pro line level signal and that an active DI would be better for long lenght cables.
The AE1a work perfectly… the levels between unbalanced and balanced seem consistent. The input sensitivity is listed as 104dB for 1VRMS @ 1kHz.
I use quality professional XLR leads, with low resistance and good shielding.
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